Not Your Mother's Poetry Workshop

This workshop will focus on poems about mothers and how they pass on knowledge (and sometimes trauma) to their children. How does poetry in particular offer insight into what we learn from our mothers and other maternal figures, how we learn it, and how it impacts the rest of our lives? Also, how does this subject matter shape the poems that tackle it? In this workshop, we will examine three different poetic forms: one prose poem, one performed piece, and a final, (slightly) more traditional piece, discussing how each writer approaches the subject matter through both language and form. Then we'll create and share our own poems.

This is a free writing workshop intended for high school students. Students of all backgrounds and skill levels are welcome. Registration is open. Sign up here:

Destiny O. Birdsong is a poet, essayist, and editor whose poems have either appeared or are forthcoming in African American Review, The Adroit Journal, Muzzle, Indiana Review, Bettering American Poetry Volume II, The BreakBeat Poets Presents: Black Girl Magic, Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week, and elsewhere. Her critical work recently appeared in African American Reviewand The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature. Destiny has won the Academy of American Poets Prize, Naugatuck River Review’s 2016 Poetry Contest, and Meridian’s 2017 “Borders” Contest in Poetry. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Jack Jones Literary Arts, and residencies from Pink Door, The Ragdale Foundation, and The MacDowell Colony. She earned both her MFA and PhD from Vanderbilt University, where she currently works as a research coordinator. She is also a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Read more of her work at www.destinybirdsong.com.